Many reports have been made on transition metal catalysts useful for organic synthesis reactions, such as asymmetric hydrogenation, asymmetric isomerization, and asymmetric hydrosilylation. Among them, many of complexes in which an optically active tertiary phosphine compound is coordinated to a transition metal, e.g., ruthenium, rhodium, and palladium, exhibit excellent performance as catalysts for asymmetric synthesis reactions. To further improve the performance of these catalysts, various phosphine compounds having a special structure have hitherto been developed as disclosed, e.g., in Kacaku Sosetsu, Vol. 32, pp. 237-238, "Yuki Kinzoku Sakutai No Kagaku" (1982), edited by The Chemical Society of Japan. In particular, 2,2'-bis(diphenylphosphino)-1,1'-binaphthyl (hereinafter abbreviated as "BINAP") is one of excellent phosphine compounds. Rhodium complexes and ruthenium complexes each containing BINAP as a ligand have been reported in JP-A 55-61937 and JP-A-61-63690, respectively (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"). Further, it has also been reported that rhodium complexes and ruthenium complexes each using 2,2'-bis[di-(p-tolyl)phosphino]-1,1'-binaphthyl (hereinafter abbreviated as "p-T-BINAP") as a ligand give satisfactory reaction results in asymmetric hydrogenation and asymmetric isomerization as disclosed in JP-A-60-199898 and JP-A-61-63690, respectively.
While a number of special phosphine compounds have been proposed in an attempt to improve performance of complexes as catalysts for asymmetric synthesis reactions as mentioned above, the conventional catalysts are still unsatisfactory in selectivity, conversion, and durability depending on the type of the proposed reaction or reaction substrate. Hence, it has been demanded to develop a novel phosphine compound which provides a catalyst having markedly improved catalytic performance over the conventional ones.